Immigration Expert: U.S. to Resettle Nearly One Million Muslim Migrants Under One Term of Clinton Presidency

26 Aug 2016Washington D.C.

The U.S. could resettle nearly one million immigrants from the Muslim world under one term of a Hillary Clinton presidency, according to projections from Center for Immigration Studies’ Steve Camarota.

Camarota explained that this large expansion in Muslim migration would be part of a massive increase in overall immigration, which the U.S. could experience under a President Hillary Clinton. Camarota noted that Clinton could potentially add as many as 10 million new immigrants to the U.S. during her first term alone, on top of the millions of illegal immigrants to whom she would grant immediate amnesty.

Camarota’s analysis is based on recent data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Census Bureau. According to the most recent DHS available data, nearly 150,000 immigrants from the Muslim world permanently resettled in the U.S. in 2014. He explained:

Absent the kind of change in policy that Donald Trump is talking about, it seems likely under the existing system that 600,000 new immigrants from the Muslim world settle in the United States in the next four years. On top of that, Secretary Clinton has indicated that she would like to take in 65,000 refugees from Syria next year. If that were to be repeated for the four years of her presidency, it would be an addition of roughly 215,000 immigrants from the Muslim world annually. So that the total number of immigrants from the Muslim world that might arrive in the United States is about 860,000 if Secretary Clinton were elected President.

“While Clinton has not spelled out her long term plans for how many Syrian refugees she would take into the country, the number who could come from that country is certainly enormous,” Camarota added.

If the same policies were followed in Clinton’s second term, roughly 1.7 million migrants from the Muslim world could potentially arrive during two terms of a Clinton presidency.

Camarota explained that these figures are just part of the larger immigration expansion that would take place under a President Clinton, who could potentially add as many as 10 million new immigrants to the country– not including the millions of illegals to whom Clinton would grant amnesty.

“Census data shows that each year the U.S. adds 1.5 million legal and illegal new arrivals. If a President Clinton were to add 65,000 Syrian arrivals on top of that number, then you could potentially see more than 6 million new immigrants added during her first term alone,” Camarota explained.

“Further, if Hillary Clinton were able to pass a bill that were similar to the Rubio-Schumer bill, then it would likely add another one million legal immigrants on top of that figure annually,” Camarota said—pointing specifically to previous analysis Camarota conducted on the Clinton-backed Gang of Eight bill, which demonstrated how the plan would have doubled legal immigration.

“While there are some unknowns in making projections of these kinds, that does seem to be what would happen,” Camarota said.

Today about nine out of every 10 new immigrants brought into the country on green cards come from non-Western countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia, or the Middle East.

The current record level of immigration into the U.S. is the result of a 1965 immigration rewrite championed by Ted Kennedy, which lifted the immigration curbs enacted by President Calvin Coolidge and opened up American visas to the entire world.

In 1970, fewer than one in 21 Americans were foreign-born. Today, as a result of the federal government’s four-decade-long green card gusher, nearly one in seven U.S. residents was born in a foreign country.

As Pew reported last September, “Fifty years after passage of the landmark law that rewrote U.S. immigration policy, nearly 59 million immigrants have arrived in the United States, pushing the country’s foreign-born share to a near record 14%… Immigration since 1965 has swelled the nation’s foreign-born population from 9.6 million then to a record 45 million in 2015… the U.S. has—by far—the world’s largest immigrant population, holding about one-in-five of the world’s immigrants.”

As Camarota’s projections demonstrate, under a President Clinton, the U.S. foreign-born population would grow to reach peaks never before experienced in U.S. history.

On Thursday, Clinton delivered a speech in which she suggested that opposition to our federal policy of large-scale immigration is a “fringe” position motivated by racism.

However, polling data seems to undermine her argument. According to Pew, 92% of the GOP electorate– and 83% of the American electorate overall– would like to see immigration levels frozen or reduced. Nearly six in ten African American voters– and a majority of Hispanics voters (53%)– said immigration into the U.S. is “too high.”

The data has led Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to conclude that “It is not mainstream, but extreme, to continue surging immigration beyond all historical precedent. And it is not rational, but radical, to refuse to recognize limits.”

“Hillary Clinton has embraced a radical and extreme open borders agenda that, properly exposed, will make her un-electable,” Sessions has said.